Wait, did Wint show a sign of weakness by saying "I'm only one guy and sometimes I'm a little late to posting things." I think this means we all have free rain to break the NDA for the Beta. Ill go fist.

Phase 1 is currently ongoing. Phase 2 will start soon. Phase 3 will start later. Then its Phase 4.

Then we can get a Retail copy of the game.

Does it count if I'm not really in the Beta?

Somewhere in here there is a secret.

Nope, just kidding. Keep up the awesome work, Wint. For one man, you handle us crazies verywell.

I dont care what anyone says but I prefer the macros and menu look of FFXIs GUI than FFXIV use of WoW like (and just about every other MMO like) hotkeys and "click on this picture icon a million times to spam this ability" look of the GUI

though the graphics (like any other SE game) look great.. Im gonna spend the first 24 hours of the game just walking around exploring lol.

I dont care what anyone says but I prefer the macros and menu look of FFXIs GUI than FFXIV use of WoW like (and just about every other MMO like) hotkeys and "click on this picture icon a million times to spam this ability" look of the GUI

though the graphics (like any other SE game) look great.. Im gonna spend the first 24 hours of the game just walking around exploring lol.

Edited, Mar 19th 2013 9:50am by DuoMaxwellxx

XIV has macros...you can assign them to CTRL or ALT + Number combinations, exactly like XI...

I dont care what anyone says but I prefer the macros and menu look of FFXIs GUI than FFXIV use of WoW like (and just about every other MMO like) hotkeys and "click on this picture icon a million times to spam this ability" look of the GUI

though the graphics (like any other SE game) look great.. Im gonna spend the first 24 hours of the game just walking around exploring lol.

Edited, Mar 19th 2013 9:50am by DuoMaxwellxx

XIV has macros...you can assign them to CTRL or ALT + Number combinations, exactly like XI...

yeah Im sure XIV has macros too I was mainly referring to the hotkey icon boxes look of the GUI as opposed to the attack/magic/item etc etc more traditional RPG menu look of FFXIs GUI

I dont care what anyone says but I prefer the macros and menu look of FFXIs GUI than FFXIV use of WoW like (and just about every other MMO like) hotkeys and "click on this picture icon a million times to spam this ability" look of the GUI

though the graphics (like any other SE game) look great.. Im gonna spend the first 24 hours of the game just walking around exploring lol.

Edited, Mar 19th 2013 9:50am by DuoMaxwellxx

XIV has macros...you can assign them to CTRL or ALT + Number combinations, exactly like XI...

yeah Im sure XIV has macros too I was mainly referring to the hotkey icon boxes look of the GUI as opposed to the attack/magic/item etc etc more traditional RPG menu look of FFXIs GUI

From my hands on I can tell you that those things can be turned off, you can literally make the UI look like anything you want. Even more so once they launch addons I bet, so you could certainly go for a more minimalist feel if that's what trips your trigger

Personally I never click on those, but I usually rely on them to remind me which ability is tied to which hotkey. Might be interesting to hide it and see if I can remember which is which.

I dont care what anyone says but I prefer the macros and menu look of FFXIs GUI than FFXIV use of WoW like (and just about every other MMO like) hotkeys and "click on this picture icon a million times to spam this ability" look of the GUI

though the graphics (like any other SE game) look great.. Im gonna spend the first 24 hours of the game just walking around exploring lol.

Edited, Mar 19th 2013 9:50am by DuoMaxwellxx

XIV has macros...you can assign them to CTRL or ALT + Number combinations, exactly like XI...

yeah Im sure XIV has macros too I was mainly referring to the hotkey icon boxes look of the GUI as opposed to the attack/magic/item etc etc more traditional RPG menu look of FFXIs GUI

From my hands on I can tell you that those things can be turned off, you can literally make the UI look like anything you want. Even more so once they launch addons I bet, so you could certainly go for a more minimalist feel if that's what trips your trigger

Personally I never click on those, but I usually rely on them to remind me which ability is tied to which hotkey. Might be interesting to hide it and see if I can remember which is which.

yeah i never manually used the FFXI gui menus either all my gameplay was done with macros but I still liked its look lol. As fo making the GUI look however you want.. probably on PC.. I doubt the console version will offer much in the way of customizability

100,000 testers isn't anything to sniff at, I imagine the server bugs he referenced were rather challenging. Think about it, they probably increased the number of testers exponentially, that would be scary as hell to see if your protocols and backends were up to the stress or not.

If they're at all like Behest it was basically a group based event that you could party up for or fly solo and you would head out from a camp en-mass to go fight some invading group. It was fun, the few times I tried it in 1.0.

"Keep in mind that testing the gamepad is the focus of the second phase, so the available content will be mostly the same"

Its phase 1 with gamepads and just more participants for stress tests

Yeah, it should be short and I imagine they are holding back until phase 1 is perfect, so barring any complications it should go quick.

Wint wrote:

100,000 testers isn't anything to sniff at, I imagine the server bugs he referenced were rather challenging. Think about it, they probably increased the number of testers exponentially, that would be scary as hell to see if your protocols and backends were up to the stress or not.

This is also true. Y-P did mention he's trying to push the servers to the limits with the first phase, and trying to get as many new testers in as possible, which is also encouraging for those of us who haven't received a golden ticket.

I dont see phase 2 going any faster than phase 1 if one of the issues with phase one was fixing the servers because of the huge amount of ppl on it.. and phase 2 will have MORE people which means more server fixing for all the MORE people phase w will have than 1 which means another long phase